Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide In The Air Into Useful Products

Alex Knapp
,
Forbes Staff
I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.

As we move forward into the 21st century, one of the biggest challenges facing humanity is climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide emissions. In particular, how to fight the effects of climate change without causing widespread economic suffering.

It goes without saying that there are a ton of different technologies being developed to solve the problem, but one interesting part of the solution is a tiny bacteria that takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turns it into useful products.

This bacteria is Pyrococcus furiosus, which grows on sugars at temperatures of about 100 degrees Celsius - in other words, when water boils. Researchers led by Dr. Michael W. Adams of the University of Georgia and Dr. Robert Kelly of North Carolina State University have taken this bacteria and genetically engineered it by taking genes from another bacteria that's active at much lower temperatures - around 73 degrees Celsius.

The virtue of this piece of genetic engineering is that at 73 degrees, the bacteria is basically asleep - it barely grows. But it does have enough metabolic activity to activate the new genes. That way, it's able to turn the carbon dixoide into useful products instead of using that carbon to grow. All it requires to create those chemicals is carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and some hydrogen gas.

The end product of the bacteria in the current experiment is 3-hydroxypropionic acid, which is a precursor used in the production of a lot of different plastic products. However, Dr. Adams informed me that this process could be modified into several different products.

The next step for Adams and his team is to work on scaling up the process to both produce more product and to create genes that build different products. In particular, the major product that Adams is interested in is biofuels. If they're successful in scaling the process, they could create a clean burning fuel that is created using the same amount of carbon dioxide it emits when it's burned.

Essentially, this would be a carbon neutral fuel that eliminates one major problem with biofuels. Namely, the amount of time and energy that's wasted in converting crops to fuel. More importantly, if this process is scalable and cheap enough, it could stop the demand for using corn and other food crops for industrial purposes. That could also end price hikes that are being seen in certain kinds of food because they're being used for fuel instead.

For his part, Adams is confident that these efforts will eventually pay off. "This is basically doing the same thing that plants do. Only now we can cut out the middleman."